I recently purchased a lathe to speed up production of chair parts. I've been shaping them by hand up until this point. The only tools I bought so far are the roughing gouge, skew, and bedan. Those are all I really need for the rungs and legs I'm making. I've been turning practice rungs and legs all week and am starting to get the hang of it. I have a full speed 8" grinder with 180 and 600 wheels from Woodturning Wonders along with the Wolverine setup. I do fine sharpening the bedan, OK sharpening the gouge, and terrible sharpening the skew.

On the gouge, my understanding is that the wings and the center should all be even. The problem I'm having is that the center always ends up shorter than the wings. I flattened it back up today and ground the bevel back in, and ended up back with the center being shorter than the wings. It seems to cut fine for the most part, but I'm trying to figure out what I'm doing wrong. I think I need to spend more time with the wings on the wheel, would that be right? With my high speed grinder, it's really tough to keep from changing the color of the wings, but I think that's OK with HSS?

The skew always seems to end up almost blunted somehow. It will cut and leaves a smooth surface, but I mostly get dust, not shavings like I've seen in the videos I've watched. It makes me think my bevel is too narrow making the cutting angle too sharp, but I'm just not sure. It's a 3/4" oval skew.

Thanks, Jason